The Bell (magazine)

Amongst the contributors to its first edition in 1940 were Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Frank O'Connor, and Jack B. Yeats.

The Bell was notable, particularly under the editorship of Seán Ó Faoláin, as an outspoken liberal voice at a time of political and intellectual stagnation, fiercely critical of censorship, Gaelic revivalist ideology, clericalism, and general parochialism.

W. R. Rodgers and Louis MacNeice were among the authors whose work sustained the magazine's connection with cultural activities in Ulster, in addition to which it repeatedly featured writing from various parts of Europe.

[1] In the course of its fourteen-year career, The Bell was variously subtitled "A Survey of Irish Life", "A Magazine of Creative Fiction", and "A Magazine of Ireland Today"; its concern with social and political matters gave rise to incisive commentaries on such topics as state censorship in Ireland, on which George Bernard Shaw wrote in an issue of 1945, the restrictive influence of the Church, and reactionary tendencies in Irish literature.

The bell also fostered many young Irish writers and artists from the 1940s and 1950s, when contributors included Anthony Cronin (who went on to edit the magazine), John Montague, Thomas Kinsella, Val Mulkerns, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Patrick Swift, Michael Farrell (under the pseudonym "Gulliver")[2] and Conor Cruise O'Brien.